The Long Face of Time
by ACDCgirl
Summary: The future holds plenty for Blaine and Kurt and their family. Looking back the abuse, the hate, the hardships and all the mistakes ever made made them who they are today. Real people, that see and feel it all. (Honestly the story's much better than the summary) Rated M just to be safe - for future chapters.
1. Chapter 1

_**Some things you should know - For the purposes of this story Rachel is Kurt's sister, Kurt and Blaine are married - they have a son and a daughter together named AJ and Elizabeth, AJ and Elizabeth's biological Mother is a close friend of Blaine and Kurt's called Heebie. The children are close to their Mother and she is very involved in raising them. Dave is a good friend of Kurt's although he doesn't live anywhere nearby. Mallorie is Blaine's Mother, she is long since divorced from Blaine's father. Cooper lives very close to Blaine and his family, he is alos bisexual.**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee - Glee would lay long by the 9 o' clock watershed if I did ;)**_

_**(Apologies for this absurdly long Authors note...)**_

It had been a long odd years, long and fortuitous, a simple few decades in which everything and everyone had changed. A space on the map of those long-short years that had taught them so much and lost them so little,

Kurt and Blaine had learned about love, how enduring it was, how it followed you around and wouldn't let you remain practical.

They had learned about each-other and the abstemious bond that they had unwittingly deadlocked and would kill them both to sever.

They had learned that whatever the mistakes made, whatever the promises broken, love and truth will out – to whatever consequences.

So as Blaine and Kurt married - life was validated and a revered union in a diamond encrusted city, taught friends and family about faith and loyalty and friends that held on for life.

Dave learned about loyalty, learned to turn his capricious love for Kurt into something more abiding, something better and brighter. Turned his mind to a Geiger counter and grew rich in silver and smiles.

And Rachel's beauty blossomed, away from the entrapment of Men that she was so used to. Her life became an operetta and she flattened into the face and voice of every girl across then nation that needed one to be larger than life.

Rachel was her brothers missed appendage. Pretty and warm. His rock, his buffer, the feather in his hat.

And then there was Heebie who had long ago learned how to give the gift of life and keep giving in her absence. Who found Kurt, the man with glass eyes and porcelain skin that renewed her faith in giving life and then wouldn't let her leave, so she had to stop giving so much for a little while.

After Heebie herself gave Kurt and Blaine the gift of life – twice – they learned – twice – that no-one ever knew the honest pain of love until they had children.

Kurt never before knew that beauty could itself be personified, first in his son AJ, then in his daughter Elizabeth.

Blaine never knew that he could be made so powerless and yet all-knowing in one fell swoop. And then again with worse fallout.

Both Blaine and Kurt learned that marital joy was superfluous and came mechanically in the face of their children's waning virtue.

Mallorie, Mother of two boys with a depth and a passion and a wound each that sucked and robbed and linked them both by a vital nerve. Two soldier lads Commander Cooper and Baby Blaine the marching boy with the chip on his shoulder.

They were all of them a family. Like children with children over those long years. That had taught them and hurt and healed them so much.

They were ready for another long odd years, together. Taking with them all that had happened. How children became other children, and hate became indifference became faith became love, how friends became strangers and family became friends and friends never left, no matter how many times and ways in which you asked them.

That long odd time, that promise of a future that spread and matured still more every day led them each back to a past that couldn't keep up with them.

A painful past, full of blackness and pixilation that they had only to share with one another to make light of forever.

And that is how they came to be by the fire that Christmas afternoon, listening to Blaine wrap them in reminiscences darker than the cataracts and the inkblots in the clouds above the diamond roofs.


	2. Chapter 2

**_This Chapter's a lot longer than the last and a lot darker. Contains a detailed description of child physical abuse. Proceed with caution. No offence intended to any victims. _**

_That they got to here, to now, into this fleeting moment that seemed to stretch on forever_

_That they fit into this patchwork square like pressed petals. That their lives, so interchanged and interwoven, were one Polaroid picture, still foggy, still developing. All that fragile framework lay now with Blaine – trouser pressed and plaid and smiling wanly, draped in "vintage" flannel, a child's toy as he wandered on the couch._

_'I hate him…'_

_What profanity. What a statement, as the plaster cast falls away to reveal the true corollary._

_'…My Father, the bastard…I just hate him…'_

_They are arranged neatly around him, Blaine – the spotlight, posed for the God peering into his magic mirror. A tired little family of puppets with their strings cut, crawling and shuddering on this futile earth. _

_Dancing naked and blind – God laughs._

_Look back down the tunnel, Blaine, look down the tunnel of your youth and tell us what you see. Make us know how we got here with your tears and your agony and give us answers Blaine, give us answers. Right now you're responsible for us being here._

_'…Rachel, you look beautiful tonight. Did you know my Father used to beat me?'_

_The words that would make her take his hand and sit with him under the spotlight – so he would not be the only one with fire on him._

_'…He had me by the hair. This one night, we'd been shouting then all of a sudden he takes a grab for my hair…'_

_Out of nothing, in the middle of nothing…AJ comes to sit beside him. Yes, he is drawn in by Blaine's words – but how did this boy who used to sit so wide eyed and enraptured on his Father's knee become so like a faded canvas? So cold and striking – a shadow of beauty, focused only on himself._

_'Darling. My Darling.'_

_There is only room on the couch for one more and Kurt doesn't dare touch his son, so removed, so volatile. He always had his Mother's eyes. The brightest, deepest, sizzling blue._

_He has waged an unfounded war against his Fathers. He hates them, he hates them, he hates them with a tireless teenage passion. Perhaps this will change that._

_But he is so beautiful. Unfathomably deep and dark, an ocean of a boy. If Kurt could just touch, just brush the hair he keeps so immaculately styled, just stroke the cheek, the skin that is alabaster and arabesque. Just hold him, feel his heart beat, feel him breath, his life, his son._

_But Kurt won't start a fight. Won't disrupt Blaine in the dark among the demons._

_'…Kurt…he hurt me. Dad threw me…against the wall…and my tooth…I never found it…'_

_Kurt's tongue has made its way into that gap, has found its way into that empty space inside his husbands mouth. Made bigger than it really is by the way he guards it._

_Someone said you could see it when he smiled. So Blaine tries not to smile anymore._

_'…Coop – you should stop drinking…'_

_No answer. Cooper looks an old man on the couch, thin inside his robe, clutching a tea-mug in calloused hands._

_It's all an illusion of course, under the robe are plates of steel flesh, naked and greasy with foreign filth, inside the mug is single malt and it numbs the soul inside a body that became a meaningless idol long ago. _

_Coopers hands have been calloused by a hundred different men and woman all with the same face. Cooper himself is an optical illusion – if you look hard enough he turns into something else and you can never see him in the same way again._

_All of this is transparent to Blaine. Perhaps that is why it means nothing._

_'…Heebie, stay the night, Dear. It's too cold to walk home, it's too dark…'_

_Heebie is the pair of lips breathing fog on the window. Heebie is on the other couch, sharing her personal space with Rachel's newest mile. Rachel's baby will be just as beautiful as her. Just as loud. Another gift from Heebie – thanks be to Kurt, who still won't let her leave._

_Heebie split a hundred ways – a childless Mother so many times who prays every day for her dream of a life to continue._

_What a life. What a dream. Thanks be to Kurt, the best friend a martyred girl could ask for._

_'…Thanks for putting Liz to bed, Mom…'_

_And who needs the least introduction, oh Grandmother. There is Mallorie in the back of everyone's mind, feathery with age on the most uncomfortable chair closest to the fire. She watches her son with such inexplicable fear. Blaine wishes he didn't need her._

_Is our company all assembled? Then we shall begin._

_'…I had a hard time with my old Man. If he wasn't ignoring me he was shouting at me, if he wasn't shouting at me he was giving me orders or insulting me and if he wasn't doing that you had to keep your head down because then it was only a matter of time…'_

_Go on Blaine, go on Blaine, no pauses, no going back now. You promised us a story and a story we shall get._

_'…He had a tell, when he was going to hurt me, not enough for me to get out, just enough for me to get ready. He used to put his hands behind his back – maybe to make it more dramatic when he grabbed me or punched me or whatever. Like this one time; he puts his hands behind him and then out of nowhere he jumps and he's got my hair and he's throwing me at the wall and he gets all wound up because his hands are covered in hair gel now, all sticky and I don't know I'm laughing because I guess, there's nothing else to do when your mouths full of blood and you can't really breathe right. But he doesn't like that, my Dad, because I'm laughing he kicks me and that's my red light because now he can't stop and - '_

_Blaine's eyes get blinder and blinder. The window glass has turned to liquid. There is nothing outside but the rest of the world._

_'…We're at the top of the stairs and I'm thinking if I just leaned over I could fall and then die and then this wouldn't be happening. Except when I do fall it's not like that at all because I might be dead but I'm still bleeding and he's still beating me and I think that might be when I lost my tooth. He's shouting at me like a – like an animal and I can't really hear him because everything's full of my heartbeat and it's scary because I can't feel him hit me anymore…'_

_Can you hear the echo in Blaine's story? The second voice that belongs to the child?_

_'…When I throw up, it's just so that I can start feeling again. I get sick to get rid of the huge thing inside me that's sucking up all my emotions. And then I start crying and I'm still bleeding everywhere and being sick a bit and it's like I'm going to be totally empty after he's done with me – nothing left of my body, nothing left inside…Damn it. I had to leave then, no choice, I told him I said; I'm done, while he was still crazy and hurting me and I think that must have slowed him down a bit. For a while and then he left and I slept on the floor…'_

_Where is the metronome? This song has lost its rhythm, Blaine._

_'…That's not it though, because if I had enough energy to pack my bags and try to leave then I wasn't broken enough for him. That morning he took his belt…he was mad because of all the blood…I was sick on the floor again and again…remember…no-one else home…oh Dad…'_

_God help us, please help us, God help us_

_'…Little bit of leather with all his strength in it – that belt telling me he hated me with every stroke…getting all red with my blood…making me cry…making me sick…Daddy, please, Daddy – I said you're hurting me, I said you're going to kill me, I said don't hurt me – don't hurt me – don't hurt me…blood everywhere…oh God help me…so much pain…Daddy please, don't you love me…why doesn't anyone love me? Why wasn't anyone there? Why wouldn't anyone help me?'_

_Blaine is a different person today – so proud, so strong. A father himself, a husband, a good and honest man._

_But somewhere crouched inside him, rocking, begging, crawling, crying, is another Boy, still bleeding, one who feels a leather stripe of hate with every breath. _

_He is the voice in Blaine's ear, the weight that makes his bones so heavy, the song that makes his sleep so full of unrest. He won't leave Blaine silence, space enough to grow and leave the hate behind him. He still speaks;_

_'…Daddy don't hurt me…let me go…Daddy don't you love me…anyone….why won't anyone help me…save me…oh God…Daddy, please…what is it…what have I done…please…God help me…Someone save me…it hurts…I'm  
all alone…I'm all alone…alone…it hurts…please…anyone…he'll kill me…it hurts…oh God…it hurts so much…please…please…please…'_

**_Please review - I need some feedback._**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Third chapter, finally. This one is twice as short as the last (and makes half as much sense) but I hope you enjoy it all the same. 3**_

_**...**_

Come down from the clouds, hail this glorified return, discern this modicum of the ordinary.

What is this hush? Have we all turned to stone?

Demons out and gone, thank-you Blaine, we're all so proud of you Blaine. Let's begin the present future now.

And Blaine himself is gazing unseeingly at the opposite wall, Rachel is still holding his hand, Mallorie having gotten up halfway through the story is now in the kitchen, clutching the countertop, sobbing bitterly.

Cooper, thin in his robe, runs a finger silently round the rim of his mug, eyes shut, breathing rather heavily.

AJ is looking at Blaine with those clear blue eyes and Kurt is looking at him thinking how a mark on that beautiful body would be something close to sacrilege.

AJ feels Kurt's eyes on him and turns he doesn't say a word, just burns him out with that unblinking, unflinching, fantastic blue fire.

Kurt doesn't have to look at Heebie, cradling that bloated belly alone on the sofa, to know they are thinking exactly the same thing.

'I love you.' Says Kurt

AJ nods, turns away, rises from the couch, goes to sit with his Mother.

Blaine's eyes fall from the wall, he turns and looks at Kurt 'I love you too,' he says expressionlessly, Rachel stretches another arm out toward Kurt who shuffles closer, takes her hand, kisses it and then just holds on to her, nearly in tears.

There is a hush about the whole room, Mallorie's weeping, Heebie's gentle whispering to the baby, Cooper's laboured breathing, the ticking of the clock, it all makes a kind of music. A funeral march.

A farewell, Blaine. Can you bear to let it all go?

Will it be Kurt next? Kurt who cries so necessarily, cries with a heart that is always boiling over, cries in a white blood that fills his cheeks with colour and his veins with life.

Kurt who cries for a little boy with innocent eyes and on his arm a little glass doll that is everything he knows he needs to be.

Is it tragic the way the whole world knew about Kurt before he was ready? Before this Earth was ready to hold him? Before he could stand the weight without being bent and changed?

Kurt's favourite demon is a wet lump of clay. And it looks just like him.

The clock says midnight.

Rachel is holding Kurt. Blaine is holding Rachel. AJ is talking to the baby.

The clock says exactly midnight.

Everyone is crying.

Something moves in the doorway.

'It's Christmas.'

'It sure is, pet.'

'Where's Santa?'

'On the roof, waiting for you to fall asleep.'

'I was asleep.'

'I don't believe a word of it.'

Don't tell your baby lies. Elizabeth can't see how sad you've all just been.

And she has never looked lovelier.

'Shall I put you to bed?'

'No.'

'It's not time to get up yet.'

'No. No thank-you.'

'I'll tuck you in.'

'No. No. Goodnight Daddy.'

'I love you, Elizabeth.'

'Goodnight.'

Gone. And in her place a tangle of golden thread. A clear shadow left wherever there has been great beauty.

'I need some air.'

Oh Rachel, maybe you will lead us back down memory lane, with your eyes all a-flicker. You could do as well as Kurt.

'I'll join you. Give me a second, let me get my jeans.'

Cooper, we all know, would wash the worlds slime from his chest before he came to Rachel. That burgundy goddess. He would turn to rivers at her touch, he would throw himself in the clouds at her feet, that wine-coloured divinity Rachel Hummel.

Two stars depart and the room is a little darker. Now there is only Mallorie to creep back into the living room, her hair covering her puffy red eyes like film over a prayer. Her awkward goodbye.

'…No, no, the car – it frosts over if I leave it out – no, I have to go…Blaine. Goodnight, my-my boy…'

Some people just never get it right. When your baby said 'Help me,' you didn't listen, you shook him off, you let it happen. All of it. So when your son came to you and said 'I helped myself,' when this man with eyes like the heavens, that you didn't recognize for a moment when he said to you 'Mum, now I'm free from all that' you smiled for him and you couldn't see for shame.

With the demons along the wind, dead and grey, with the leaves and the snow, there is no more reason for Mallorie to stay.

Blaine still has photo's of himself and his Father, his Daddy looking so happy, so proud; just because he doesn't have a gay son yet. Blaine kept them to appease a memory, a stupid, ugly parasite that wouldn't open its jaws and still believed that things could change. That Blaine should change. But now that is impossible.

It's the best kind of therapy, living paralytic in a room full of vaporous devotion.

Along with family.

Along with everyone who needed to hear.

And still the story will continue.

It winds and it writes and it folds and unfolds and follows them around on gossamer wings. Like cobwebs, that will catch in the hair of the next one to fall, of the next one to tell.

**_..._**

**_So whose memories will we dive into next? Nobody knows. Not even the author so I'm going to need some feedback. Pretty please? :)_**


End file.
